Buoys

[SayMikey]

If you blow up the balloons too much they pop real easy. We made it work by not blowing them up so tight. It takes some experimenting but works great

 

[Tom David]

If you blow up the balloons too much they pop real easy. We made it work by not blowing them up so tight. It takes some experimenting but works great

In Evansville we had success with the Qualatex 16 inch Latex Balloons. We discovered if you inflated the balloons no larger than 10-12 inches, they withstood the test of predators under the water. Make sure you purchase LARGE LATEX balloons.

TD

 

[Tom David]

In Evansville we had success with the Qualatex 16 inch Latex Balloons. We discovered if you inflated the balloons no larger than 10-12 inches, they withstood the test of predators under the water. Make sure you purchase LARGE LATEX balloons.

TD

https://www.bargainballoons.com/balloon.asp?pc=43878

 

[T.S.Davis]

I've made them out of all kinds of stuff. 5" pool noodles with PVC pipe, layers of blue insulation with string, milk jugs, soda bottles, 2 part polyurethane foam with a ginormous eye bolt in the middle (oh man! don't do this). I've run on balloon courses too. They're great until somebody clips one. Nobody plans to hit a buoy but it happens all the time. Each time they do get hit you have a course to repair. Doesn't matter how easy it is to replace. It's time. For me, the buoy needs to be light enough to move a bit if nicked but tough enough to not explode if it is. 7" crab pot floats are my favorite. Cheap, light, and can be set up to re-center themselves if they get knocked around. Graze a buoy and the course fixes itself before the next heat most of the time. I don't want to lose any race daylight for course work.

 

[Mike Cathey]

In Houston, we used 12" styrofoam balls... painted them with florescent orange paint...cut them in half and drilled a 1/2" hole thru them...

Boom... two bouys. and they floated flat on the water, nice and easy to see.

We pulled a floating nylon rope up thru the center with a clip tied on one end and double knot on top of the bouy. clipped it on to the sub bouy, easy and ready to go.

Most of the time when a boat just clips them, it will roll off to the side and the bouy stays in place. On a direct hit, it will pull the knot thru the bouy... easy to fix.. because the rope is still floating... retrieve boat clips on a new bouy,, brings in the one that broke away and re-ties it and it's ready to go again.

In the event of a center punch, the styrofoam is soft enough to minimize damage and save some sponsons and boom tubes...

We always kept 5-6 of them on hand, ready to go on race day so it was a quick fix. kept things moving between rounds.

At one time we tried one gallon milk jugs filled with expanding foam.... bad idea..the foam gets pretty hard after a while and can damage boats.

Have you found the half Styrofoam buoys to be launching systems for your boats? I squared up on one with a winged scale boat and it hit the water upside down and cleaned the cowling and wings right off. We were also getting some comments from fisherman about the fish ingesting the little balls of foam when a chunk of the buoy got hit.

 

[Wasted wages]

Let's just say that knowing the history of the rock pit we leased for our site, there was no fishing allowed by the property owner...and I doubt there was much aquatic life in it anyway.

And yes, due to the shape of the foam bouy, it can launch a hydro that squares up on one...
Mono's... not so much. Most of the time, a mono would roll off and keep on going!

 

[T.S.Davis]

Atlanta had some big foam blocks for their offshore pin on the other side of the lake. Think lane 6,017. Being big doesn't help me a bit. I still can't get around the danged things. Of course they're in another zip code so.....